1. Technical Field
This application relates generally to the dissemination of subjective information, i.e., opinions or ratings of products or services. More specifically this application relates to a means by which a user can collect subjective opinions from persons perceived to be peers who are located within a given distance of the user.
2. Description of Related Art
In our largely urban, mobile culture, people encounter a huge amount of information about the many choices they can make—books, movies, restaurants, museums, people to date—often without a means of filtering this information with regard to their own preferences. Sometimes vendors offering products or services attempt to meet this need by providing a review system. For example, an online book vendor allows users to rate and give comments about books they have read. The separate, individual reviews are then aggregated to provide an average response, giving a potential user an idea of whether or not they might wish to purchase the book. This review system is kept in a centralized location by the vendor and is available to anyone who wants to rate the book. Additionally, the vendor can make suggestions about books a user may be interested in. These suggestions generally rely on either the users previous history (what they look at, what they purchase) and/or on the history of other users who have purchased similar books. Of course, books are only a single item; this type of rating service can also be used with any other type of merchandise or service.
However, these rating systems are not able to offer a more personalized approach because of their centralized nature. For example, it is well know that not everyone's tastes are the same. Most people are much more likely to utilize the opinion of someone whose tastes are similar to their own, rather than someone who is perceived as having very different tastes. For example, the people one encounters at a favorite restaurant would probably be better suited to recommend other good restaurants than the general populace would, especially if the fellow customers also rate the favorite restaurant highly. In a similar vein, people who dislike a movie that one disliked may be able to warn you away from other movies of a like type.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a method and device by which ratings can be requested among ad-hoc groups of people to provide a more reliable, personalized rating system.